


Still Feel the Pull of You

by sequence_fairy



Series: Salt Skin [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Supernatural Ryan Bergara, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-07-24 00:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: “I–” Shane starts, but he really has no explanation. He blinks again. Ryan’s chest is heaving, he’s breathing hard, and water is dripping off his hair and down onto his shoulders, drops beading against his skin and rolling down his arm and– “what the fuck is on your arm, man?”Ryan turns to look and blanches, before looking back up at Shane. “Get out,” he says, and there’s enough of a growl in his voice that Shane is half-turning to go before he’s even realised he’s moving.“No, really,” Shane says, ignoring the voice in the back of his head telling him to just go, and stepping closer again, as if to inspect the patch of strangely coloured skin on Ryan’s arm. “What’s that? It’s like–” It’s like scales, is what Shane wants to say, but that’s ridiculous.Or: the one where Ryan's a siren and Shane walks in on him singing in the shower.





	Still Feel the Pull of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Booked_Painter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Booked_Painter/gifts).



> Pinch-hitting for the [shyanexchange2019](https://shyanwritingevents.tumblr.com) has been my utter pleasure. Thanks to nini for setting up this great event!
> 
> This is for [Booked_Painter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Booked_Painter/pseuds/Booked_Painter) who asked for Supernatural!Ryan and left me a fairly wide playing field. I took your prompt and ran with a creature that I have yet to see in this fandom! I hope you like it!
> 
> Thanks as well to [Jenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mukemagic/pseuds/mukemagic) and [Kika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kika988/pseuds/Kika988) for beta help and cheerleading. 
> 
> ~~(I'm definitely gonna be doing a follow up to this at some point, because I don't know about you all, but I require further explorations of just what Ryan can get Shane to do under his thrall.)~~

> _ “If the bards of old the true has told _
> 
> _ The sirens have raven hair.” _
> 
> _\- LM Montgomery_

* * *

Shane lets himself in, pocketing Ryan’s spare key as he does. He shoves the door harder than is maybe necessary and it bangs against the wall opposite as he steps through. Ryan’s entryway is a jumble of shoes, his gym bag, the backpack he carries to work, and a pile of cloth grocery bags. Shane stumbles over a pair of shoes trying to get the door shut behind him. He glowers meaningfully at them as he flips the deadbolt back to locked and looks up. 

Ryan’s not in the kitchen, nor is he in the living room. Open plan living means less places for the bugger to hide, Shane thinks. This asshole had the audacity to fucking disapear just in time to not be roped into today’s Buzzfeed nonsense, and Shane is going to be picking glitter out of his ears for the next seventy years. It’s the herpes of craft material and Shane hates it. You can’t ever really get rid of it, and every time Shane shakes his head, more falls out of his hair. He likes his job plenty, and usually it’s not a problem to be pulled into doing videos with friends, but Christ, a man has got to have standards, and having to test glitter bombs is something he probably could have done without getting involved in. 

Shane takes a deep breath. He’s not really mad at Ryan, he knows, he’s just annoyed that Ryan is also not stuck picking flakes of shiny paper out of his hair, and annoyed because Ryan missed their previously scheduled ‘pick up some beers and watch a bad movie’ not-a-date, and hadn’t texted or called to say he was going to be late or whatever. Well and so, now Shane is here, beer in tow, and Ryan can just deal with it when he gets out of the shower. 

Something twigs in the back of Shane’s brain then, like an itch at the base of his skull. There’s a sound just over the hiss of the running water and the rumble of the exhaust fan. Is Ryan singing? He stills in the centre of Ryan’s living room and cocks his head towards the closed bathroom door, listening carefully. It’s a song, something that sounds old and not at all like the kind of thing that Shane associates with Ryan. It sounds like something almost ancient, like some fairytale song maybe. Shane can’t make out the words. It sounds familiar, and yet like nothing he’s ever heard before. 

It sounds like something Shane wants to hear more of. 

He’s almost at the bathroom door before he realises what he’s doing, hand reached out for the knob, fingers only a hand’s breadth from opening the door and barging right in to Ryan’s bathroom. Shane blinks, looking down at his own hand, and then jumps back as if burned. What the fuck, Madej? You were  _ not _ just going to walk into Ryan’s bathroom while he’s showering. He retreats, nearly tripping over the floor lamp on his way back to the couch. Shane shakes his head, breathes out slow and steady and pulls out his phone. 

He pokes around Instagram for a moment, before swapping over to Twitter to scroll through his feed. His timeline is full of nonsense today, some new meme that everyone and their mother has latched on to. Shane grimaces down at his phone and holds the home key down, bringing himself back to his home screen. The background photo makes him pause. He always liked that shot of him and Ryan, pulled from a still in an early Supernatural episode. Neither of them are looking at the camera. They’re looking at each other. Ryan’s eyes were wide as saucers and his mouth dropped open on what Shane remembers was a fairly creative expletive. Shane’s watching him with barely disguised glee. Shane locks his phone, and drops it beside him onto Ryan’s couch. 

Shane leans back, letting his head tip back onto the top of the couch so he can stare up at the ceiling. There’s the spreading coffee-coloured stain of old water damage in the corner closest to the patio door. Shane swallows. He’s thirsty. He remembers that he left the beer on the floor in the entryway, so he pushes himself to his feet, and shuffles back to the door. 

With the beer safely stowed in Ryan’s fridge, Shane returns to the couch. Ryan’s still singing. There’s still a tingle in Shane’s brain, like a little hook somewhere inside him, urging him towards the bathroom door. Shane shakes his head and resettles against the couch, picking up his phone again, but he keeps turning to look at the closed door instead of down at his screen. Shane drags his eyes away from the door handle and back down to his phone but the screen’s gone dark. He unlocks his phone, but before he can remember what app he wanted to check, he’s back to looking at the closed door again. 

Ryan’s voice is still filtering through between the sound of the water and the exhaust fan. Shane still can’t make out the words of what it is that Ryan is singing, and he finds himself desperately wanting to know what it is. He gets up, intending to walk around to the other side of the room to look out the sliding door, giving himself something else to stare at aimlessly, but he ends up in front of the bathroom door again. He can almost make out what Ryan’s saying. If he can just get a little closer, he’s sure he can figure out what song it is that Ryan’s singing. The melody is something Shane is almost sure he knows, almost sure he could hum it to himself and figure out the song, if he could just hear a little bit more. 

His hand is around the doorknob before he can stop himself, and then he’s opening the door and walking into the steamy bathroom, letting the door bang against the countertop as he does. 

The singing stops and Ryan leans around the edge of the shower curtain and screams. “Jesus Christ, dude! What the fuck!?” 

Shane blinks, stunned into silence. He really–he really did just walk in here while Ryan was in the shower. Ryan, who is now frantically snatching the shower curtain around himself and glaring at Shane, eyebrows drawn down in a furious line. 

“I–” Shane starts, but he really has no explanation. He blinks again. Ryan’s chest is heaving, he’s breathing hard, and water is dripping off his hair and down onto his shoulders, drops beading against his skin and rolling down his arm and– “what the fuck is on your arm, man?” 

Ryan turns to look and blanches, before looking back up at Shane. “Get out,” he says, and there’s enough of a growl in his voice that Shane is half-turning to go before he’s even realised he’s moving.

“No, really,” Shane says, ignoring the voice in the back of his head telling him to just go, and stepping closer again, as if to inspect the patch of strangely coloured skin on Ryan’s arm. “What’s that? It’s like–” It’s like scales, is what Shane wants to say, but that’s ridiculous. 

“Shane,” Ryan says, deadly serious. “Get the fuck out of my bathroom or I will deck you.” 

Shane goes, pulling the door shut behind him. He moves as if on auto-pilot, sinking down onto Ryan’s couch and dropping his head into his hands. What in the actual fuck was that about, he wonders. Sure, they’re close friends, but walking into the bathroom while Ryan’s in the shower? It was like he couldn’t stop himself, and he wouldn’t have either, if Ryan hadn’t noticed him and screamed. Shane knows he would have walked right into the shower with him. 

And then his arm, that patch of iridescence on Ryan’s skin, all green and gold and glimmering under the light. Kind of like the flake of glitter that’s sitting on the back of Shane’s hand. It shimmers in the low light of Ryan’s living room, and Shane reaches over with his other hand to rub it off his skin with his thumb. He doesn’t think Ryan’s would come off like that though, it seemed like it was part of him. Maybe some kind of psoriasis? Shane doesn’t know. How long has Ryan had it, Shane wonders, because they’ve definitely had to change in front of each other before, and Ryan’s never been shy about losing his shirt, so maybe this is new? 

Shane’s lost in thought when Ryan comes out into the living room finally, still staring down at the carpet, so the first thing he sees is another hint of that glittering skin in between Ryan’s toes. Ryan scrunches his bare feet into the carpet and Shane looks up. Ryan’s rubbing a towel against his hair and wearing a pair of basketball shorts and one of their old merch t-shirts, softened by many washes. 

“You–your toes?” Shane asks, because his filter hasn’t caught up with his mouth yet.

Ryan looks down at his own feet and sighs, then he sits down on the coffee table in front of Shane, hands between his knees. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Shane startles. 

“What’re you apologizing for? I walked into your shower. If anyone should apologize, it’s me.” 

Ryan waits for a beat before letting his mouth curve up into a grin. “Well, go on then,” he says. 

Shane grimaces. “Sorry,” he says, and Ryan’s grin gets wider. 

“Not much of an apology for walking in on a guy in the shower, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“I don’t–Ryan, I  _ am _ sorry, but I don’t know why I even–”

Ryan interrupts with a huff of frustration. “See, that’s what I need to apologize for,” he says, and he looks so guilty, and so worried. The previous smile has run off his face entirely. He sighs, and shoves a hand through his hair and then scrubs it across his face. There’s a tension in his shoulders, Shane notices, that isn’t usually there. Ryan’s a tense and anxious guy, he knows, but usually it’s less vulnerable than this. Ryan’s hunching in on himself, like he’s trying to pre-emptively protect himself from something. 

“Hey,” Shane says, because he isn’t some kind of unempathetic monster. Whatever’s going on with Ryan is important and scary enough that it’s a big deal to share, and Shane maybe knows a little bit about what it’s like to carry a secret and to have to share it when you’re unprepared. “Whatever it is,” he says, “I’m here for you, okay?” 

Ryan takes a deep breath and looks back up to catch Shane’s eyes with his own. “Look, Shane, it’s… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–I wasn’t trying to–Christ I didn’t know anyone was listening. I’d never like, actually compel you–”

“Compel me? What the fuck, Ryan?” 

“I’m–shit, mum said this would be easier,” Ryan says, and Shane thinks he’s probably mostly talking to himself. Ryan shakes himself and breathes out again. “I’m a siren,” he says, each word carefully spaced so Shane can’t pretend he heard something else. 

Shane pretends he misheard anyway, because what Ryan said is unbelievable. “A what?” 

“A siren,” Ryan repeats.

“How–what? Is this some kind of like, fucking bit? Are you fucking with me, Bergara? I swear to fucking God–”

“No, Shane, just–it’s true okay? That’s why–” Ryan sucks in another breath. “That’s why when you came in and I was singing?” Ryan looks at Shane, and Shane nods, affirming that Ryan was indeed singing when Shane walked into his apartment. “You–you were compelled to come into the bathroom. But I didn’t mean to, please, you gotta believe me. I would never–I’ve never used it on purpose, I wouldn’t–” 

Ryan keeps going but all Shane can hear is the roaring in his ears. 

Ryan’s not human. Not even like, half or partly, he’s just full on not at all human. And like, not in the joking way that the fans make out that Shane’s maybe a demon in human clothing, which, privately, Shane thinks is fucking hilarious and does absolutely nothing to discourage, but Ryan … Ryan is really, properly, a creature of the supernatural realm. He’s something out of the fucking Odyssey. This cannot be happening to Shane, it cannot. He will not stand for this. This is insane. 

He has to move, to get away from this insane conversation and think rationally about this. Shane stands, abrupt, and stalks across Ryan’s apartment to the patio door that leads out to Ryan’s tiny little balcony. Behind him, Ryan has stopped talking, not that Shane’s heard anything he’s said for the last however long it’s been. Shane stands in front of the closed door, hand on the handle, eyes staring unseeing out at the parking lot and further towards the little park between this complex and the next. 

“Shane?” Ryan asks, and the hesitancy in it cuts through the noise in Shane’s head. 

He turns around. “Prove it,” Shane says. Today is a bad day for his brain-to-mouth filter but Shane’s committed now. “Prove you are what you say you are. Do the thing with the singing again.” 

Ryan’s eyes widen and his eyebrows go up, like they want to climb right into his hairline. “I–you don’t–you don’t know what you’re asking,” he says, putting up his hands between them, as if in supplication. As if he wants Shane to ask for anything but this.

Shane shakes his head. “No,” he says, “prove it.” 

Apprehension is written into every tense line of Ryan’s body. After a long moment, he breaks their shared gaze, looking down at his hands. “You asked for this,” he says, and Shane feels the ratchet of tension tightening in his gut. Something coils just outside his awareness, like a string being pulled taut, like this is a moment that could either stretch or break and Shane swallows against the sudden lump in his throat. 

Ryan starts to sing. 

It’s soft and shaky at the start, but his voice gains strength as he continues. It takes very little time before Shane can feel it again–the compulsion–the need to be close to Ryan. He can’t seem to stop himself, nor can he explain why he’s doing it, but he’s moving forward, getting closer to Ryan. All he can hear is Ryan’s voice, and the desire to be nearer to it, wanting to immerse himself in it, to drown in it, to do whatever Ryan tells him to do, and do it happily, no matter what. 

He will drown himself in the sound of Ryan’s voice, Shane thinks, with sudden and wild certainly, he absolutely will drown himself in this.

Ryan stops and Shane blinks back to awareness. Ryan is staring up at him, one hand pushed into Shane’s chest, palm flat against his sternum. Shane looks down. Ryan’s cheekbones are dusted with iridescence, shimmering green and gold, his eyes are flecked with the same golden glow, and his ears have tapered into fine points, their tips touched with the same iridescence as his cheeks.

“Holy shit,” Shane breathes, “look at you.” He wants to touch, wants to see what the scales on Ryan’s cheeks feel like under his fingers, he wants to know where else they might spill across Ryan’s skin. He clenches his fists to keep himself from touching and stumbles back. “What …” Shane swallows. “What was that?” 

Heat pools in Shane’s gut, thick and molten and aching. He wants, God, he wants. He can’t bring himself to care enough to discern how much of the wanting is whatever the singing is and how much of it is just Ryan, standing there, the shimmer of scales on his hands and the tops of his feet and down the back of his arms. Maybe it’s all the singing, but Shane doesn’t even care. He just wants. His hands are tingling with the need to touch Ryan, and he can feel himself still leaning towards Ryan, like Ryan’s the embodiment of entropy and Shane’s the universe, tending towards him.

“I told you,” Ryan says, patience in every syllable, “I’m a siren.” As Ryan speaks, Shane catches a glimpse of the fine points of his teeth.

“I thought–” Shane’s voice is hoarse, his mouth dry. He licks his lips and swallows to try and work up enough saliva to speak. He feels torn between the desire to put his head between his knees and freak the fuck right out and also the undeniable desire to thread his fingers through Ryan’s hair and tilt his chin up and kiss him, wanting to feel the bite of Ryan’s teeth.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asks, when Shane doesn’t finish his sentence, concern etched on his face. 

“Ah,” Shane says, because he’s not sure. “I think so?” 

Ryan steps back himself, and with the increase in space between them, Shane feels the burn of arousal under his skin lessen. He flexes his hands, wiping his palms on his pants and letting out a shaky breath. 

“It can be a lot,” Ryan says, lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug that is probably anything but. Shane can see the way Ryan’s jaw is still held tight beneath the mask of forced nonchalance. 

“Yeah,” Shane says, “that’s–yeah.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out on a count of seven, eyes closed. When he opens them again, the scales on Ryan’s skin have disappeared, fading back to normal, human skin. “How do you do that?” Shane asks, lifting one hand to his own cheek. 

Ryan starts. “Oh uh, well, I can like, put it away when I’m not using my, like, whatever.” He lifts his hand to his own cheek, fingers sweeping across the ridge of his cheekbone and then up to push his hair out of his face. 

“You know your ears get pointy and shit?” Shane asks, because maybe Ryan doesn’t know this fact about his own ears for some reason. 

“Oh yeah, they do,” Ryan says, matter of fact. “I also have webbing between my toes and fingers,” he says, spreading his hands in front of himself. Shane looks, but there’s no webbing. “Not now,” Ryan says, following Shane’s gaze, “just when I’m not paying attention to the glamour.” 

“Glamour?” Shane asks, “like some kind of fairy bullshit?”

“Oh no, absolutely not,” Ryan says, and then looks over his shoulder like he’s afraid he’s being watched. “Ixnay on the airyfays, okay?” He says, so seriously that Shane can do nothing but gape at him.

“So,” Shane says, into the silence after that pronouncement.

“So,” Ryan repeats, then he squares his shoulders. “Do you have any like, questions? Or whatever?”

“Do I have any questions?” Shane repeats, breathy laughter at the edges of the words. “Fucking hell, Ryan, you’re like, some kind of fairy tale creature and you’re asking me if I have any questions? Holy shit, dude.” 

Ryan’s mouth quirks up, like he might smile, but then he sobers. “You can ask me anything,” he says, “and I promise to be honest.” 

Shane considers this. Questions clamour against his teeth, things he’s wanted to know about things he’s never believed in but are now coming true right before his eyes. He steps around Ryan instead to go and sit on the couch. “I need a minute,” he says, and Ryan nods, like that’s perfectly acceptable and leans down to pick up his towel where he’d dropped it at his feet and then disappears back towards his bedroom. As soon as Ryan leaves the room, the last vestiges of the unearthly heat disappear from Shane’s veins. 

Shane takes a deep breath and for the first time since he walked into the apartment, he feels mostly like himself again. How has he never noticed before that Ryan’s not human? They’ve known each other for years, and have practically lived in each other’s pockets for a good portion of that and Shane’s only finding this out about Ryan now? Does he ask Ryan why he never told him before? No. Shane already knows the answer to that. He’s been playing the skeptic a little too well, and now he knows why Ryan believes so strongly in the other direction, because he  _ is _ what he believes in, so it makes sense that other things would be real too. That’s a thought for later, Shane decides, for when he’s not sitting on his friend’s couch with a slowly fading hard-on. 

Shane shifts. Well, probably not all of that was because of the whatever with Ryan’s voice, but at least some of it was. He wonders if it’s mutual, because when he’d looked down, underneath the shimmer of the scales on his cheeks, there’d been a flush, and Ryan’s pupils had been dilated, mouth slightly parted. Did he imagine that? Shane doesn’t think so, and he could ask, but he doesn’t want to just come right out with it. 

Ryan slips back into the room, shifting from foot to foot. Shane looks up. “Do you want anything?” 

“I brought beer,” Shane says, and then he remembers why he was here in the first place. “Hey, what happened to you today? We were supposed to meet at my place tonight for a movie.” 

Ryan’s eyes fly open wide. “Oh my god,” he says, “I totally forgot. Fucking phone didn’t remind me, I knew I was forgetting something. I’m sorry, Shane.” 

“It’s okay,” Shane says, dismissing the apology. “That’s why I’m even here.”

“Can I … can I get you a beer?” Ryan asks, and Shane nods. Ryan’s still not wearing any socks or shoes and Shane sneaks a look down at his feet as he walks into the kitchen. The webbing between his toes is gone now, too.

Ryan gets them both a beer and then sinks down on the opposite end of the couch from Shane. 

“So like, are you going to sing me to my death at the bottom of the sea?” Shane asks, once he’s swallowed the first pull from his bottle. 

Ryan splutters. “Dude,” he says, “not all sirens.” 

In the end, Shane’s not sure who starts laughing first, but eventually, Shane’s wiping tears out of the corners of his eyes and Ryan’s head is thrown back, his whole body engaged in his laugh. He’s still Ryan, and Shane is relieved to discover it. Something unwinds in the column of his spine and Shane sinks more firmly into the couch cushions, watching Ryan wipe at his own eyes. The coiling thing from before loosens back to the even tension there always seems to be between them, and Shane leans forward to set his beer down on the coffee table. 

“Do you still want to watch a movie?” Shane asks. 

“Oh yeah,” Ryan says, something sly in the corner of his mouth. “I have just the one.” 

“If you put  _ Shape of Water _ on, I will actually murder you, never mind that you are actually some freaky fish person who probably eats people.”

Ryan laughs, bright and loud and Shane grins. 

(Ryan does not put  _ Shape of Water _ on, but he does find  _ Creature From the Black Lagoon _ instead and Shane refrains from commenting. They finish the six pack, order a pizza and by the time Shane’s leaving to go back to his place, any lingering awkwardness has been replaced by a series of increasingly terrible fish puns and Shane feels like his world is settling into a new normal, one that he won’t feel badly for enjoying. 

He catches himself thinking on the way home, though, about the dusting of shimmering scales on Ryan’s cheeks, and wonders if next time, Ryan might not stop singing, and wants, desperately, to find out what might happen if he didn’t.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and chat with me about my fic on [tumblr](http://sequencefairy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic).


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